she cried, "it's the wind--it's the wind!"

Out of nowhere came the moaning sound of the wind, sweeping unchecked
across space, blowing from the south! While we listened with caught
breath, it seized some papers and sent them rattling across the table,
blew a lock of hair in my eyes, made the dry grass rustle so that it
sounded for one glorious moment like rain.

We ran outside and stood in the darkness, our dresses whipping around
us, looking at the sky. Here and there above the red haze we saw a
bright, jagged tongue of flame leap up, licking the black sky.

The homesteaders who had not gone to the fire found waiting alone
intolerable, and one by one they drifted in to the store, waiting taut
and silent.

At midnight we heard the staccato beats of a horse's hoofs. A messenger
was coming. Only one horse on the plains could travel like that; it was
Black Indian. And a moment later Lone Star Len flung himself from the
horse and came in.

He had been fighting flame. His face was blackened almost beyond
recognition.

"It's all right," he said at once, before we could question him. "The
fire's over on the government land. It's beyond the Strip."

His eyes and lips were swollen, face and hands blistered. "It's still
ragin'," he went on, "but there is a little creek, dry mostly, between
the fire and the Strip. It's not likely to get this far. 'Course, the
wind is bad. It's blowin' sparks across on the grass, this side of the
creek. But some of the settlers and Indians are watchin' it."

Ida Mary came in from the shack with sandwiches and black coffee and set
them before him.

"You didn't need to bother doin' that for me," he protested; "you girls
better go to bed."

"When did you have anything to eat?" Ida Mary asked, as he drank the hot
coffee and devoured the food ravenously, moving his hands as though they
hurt him unbearably.

"This mornin'. Been working with that fire since noon; I had started for
the chuck-wagon when I smelt smoke...."

"Lone Star, why did you risk your life to save a reservation full of
homesteaders?" I asked him.

He stood for a moment with a chagrined expression on his smoke-scarred
face.

"Cattle needs the grass," he replied as he stalked out and rode slowly,
wearily away into the flame-lighted night.

The fire had broken out on range and government land off toward the
White River country--to the southeast, where Lone Star rode herd. As the
country for the most part was uninhabi